Article | June 30, 2026

Convert commercial aerospace demand into dependable output

by Armin Weigand, Head Travel, Transportation, Logistics Europe, at DXC Technology

Commercial aerospace doesn’t have a demand problem. It has a flow problem. 

Orders are strong, but fleets are aging and customers want more efficient aircraft. Yet too many manufacturers and service providers are discovering that healthy demand doesn’t automatically become delivered aircraft, reliable aftermarket performance or predictable cash flow. 

The International Air Transport Association (IATA) says the commercial aircraft backlog has passed 17,000 aircraft, equal to nearly 12 years of current production, while the average fleet age has risen to 15.1 years. 

Aerospace operations optimization is rising on the boardroom agenda because it addresses the industry’s core challenge: turning strong demand into reliable output.

In practice, it means improving the flow of work across production, suppliers, maintenance and support so delays, inefficiencies and unnecessary costs don’t accumulate. For commercial aerospace leaders, that’s now a growth, margin and customer satisfaction issue.

However, today’s constraints are no longer confined to one weak supplier or one delayed program. They run through the entire aerospace operations model.

Deloitte’s 2026 aerospace and defense outlook points to continued pressure from supply chain fragility, labor shortages and the growing importance of the aftermarket as a stable revenue engine. PwC makes a similar point: demand is still outpacing supply while workforce and supply-chain pressures remain intense.

In other words, this is not a quick detour in the travel and transportation sector. It’s a structural test of how well aerospace organizations coordinate production, suppliers, maintenance and decisioning. That’s why the strongest commercial aerospace organizations are shifting the conversation away from isolated disruptions and toward enterprise flow. 

The objective is not simply to buy faster or negotiate harder. It’s to reduce friction from design to production, from production to sustainment and from the shop floor to the boardroom. When those handoffs are weak, delays multiply, inventory management buffers expand and managers spend more time compensating for uncertainty than improving output. 

To C-suite leaders, throughput sounds operational. However, its consequences are financial:

• Slower production delays revenue recognition.

• Unclear parts availability weakens planning confidence.

• Poor sustainment visibility raises support costs and puts pressure on customer relationships. 

An aging installed base may help support aftermarket demands, but it also raises the premium on accurate maintenance forecasting, repair turnaround and parts planning. Deloitte notes that the aftermarket is likely to remain a dependable cash generator in 2026, which makes execution quality across that lifecycle even more important. 

A new dividing line in commercial aerospace operations management       

Therefore, it’s less about who has the most demand and more about who can convert complexity into dependable output. The organizations that improve visibility, planning and handoffs across the value chain are in a stronger position to protect margin and earn customer confidence, even when the broader market remains constrained. 

The most useful examples start with business outcomes, not with technology labels. 

In Germany, a leading aircraft maintenance company’s commercial issue was the accuracy of its quotes. In heavy maintenance, quote too high and you lose the work; quote too low, and you destroy profitability. The company used AI models trained on historical maintenance data and prior proposal data to more accurately predict likely defects. The result was not just a smarter quoting process. It improved production schedules, resource forecasting and the probability of winning new contracts with proposals that were both more competitive and more realistic.

Aerospace industry companies often focus on factories and supply chain processes while undervaluing the drag caused by internal friction across globally distributed operations. Textron, which operates in 23 countries and employs 32,000 people, introduced AI-powered chatbots, self-service tools and improved asset management to create a more consistent support model. Service Desk tickets fell by 20%, cutting costly disruptions and helping teams to resolve issues faster. That may sound like an internal IT story, but in complex aircraft operations, fewer interruptions and faster support translate into better execution capacity. 

Lockheed Martin Aeronautics built the business case for a next-generation manufacturing execution system around improved quality in internally produced and supplier-sourced parts, stronger production engineering, shop-floor execution and better data handoff into sustainment. While Lockheed operates in defense, the underlying logic is highly relevant to commercial aerospace: flow improves when design, planning, production and support stop behaving like separate domains. 

The immediate priority is to identify where the flow breaks down most often and where that breakdown creates the greatest commercial damage. In many organizations, the answer won’t be one dramatic failure. It will be dozens of weak handoffs between suppliers and plants, engineering and operations, maintenance planning and execution or frontline teams and support functions. That’s where the initial capital and management focus must be. 

DXC Technology, a leading aerospace digital transformation partner, helps organizations move from diagnosis to execution.

Our work with the German aircraft maintenance provider, Textron and Lockheed Martin Aeronautics shows a consistent pattern: use better data, seamless integration and more responsive support models to improve outcomes leaders actually care about (e.g., quote quality, contract win probability, turnaround planning, service continuity, shop-floor execution and sustainment readiness). 

In a market where the backlog is excessive and smooth delivery is scarce, those capabilities are becoming a genuine source of competitive edge.